


Fostering Codependency

by nigellecter



Series: Fire & Brimstone Arc [2]
Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bottom Hannibal, Breathplay, Cannibalism, Choking, Drug Use, Emotional Manipulation, Hannibal is Hannibal, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, Incest, JustFuckMeUp, M/M, Murder, Oral Sex, Top Nigel, Twincest, Unconsciousness, autocannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:17:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7055977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigellecter/pseuds/nigellecter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set a few years after Fire & Brimstone verse where Nigel becomes a licensed private investigator / a homicide detective assigned to Chesapeake Ripper's case. Of course, he puts all the blood, sweat and tears into protecting their shared interests, but it is taking a toll on their complicated (and unhealthy) relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YouDroppedYourForgiveness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouDroppedYourForgiveness/gifts).



A careful quirk of his hips, which pivots his elbow towards the back in return, Nigel’s scrutinizing intense gaze spans the whole expanse of an abandoned building, long entrapped in the abrupt curtailment of time. The ominous walls shriek of pained screams and there are still evidences of torturous evaluations and supposed treatments rampant through the metastasizing web of thickly entangled vines and moss. The air breaths rancid wretchedness. Along with long-settled remains of ash and blood which would’ve surely flooded the yellowed tiles, intensified with graze of crisp fall zephyr.

 

Fallen into despair with such horrifying allegations and macabre tales floating around the institution, he had been well aware of one associated with this particular building - the hacked-up body of a woman’s body, showing up in three separate graves after the killer, a fellow patient who had dismembered her, keeping her seven teeth as grim souvenirs. To his nonplussed serendipity, he would encounter much more of a sea change, as it will drive him off his rocker.

 

Strewn shattered remnants creaking under his feet, he tiptoes around the grimy and grainy floor, heavily dusted with fragments of mirrors and startling array of enigmatic purples and reds seeping through the windows with dangling glass shards. Once ornate interiors, private rooms reserved for selected group of rich patients, long, rambling walls that would let the daybreak of the golden glow in. The appealing interior that once dwelled upon the very place soon had tainted itself with all the typical, nightmarish descriptions and trappings of an asylum. Overpopulated and with lack of care from the staff members, many would die out of their sight and would not be discovered until they were rotting away in some forgotten room, merging with the equally besmirched walls of desecrated morals and ethics. A bad rap of electroshock therapy and lobotomy to be overused as a means of controlling the patients, the aimless wandering and the vacant stare of the walls remain to be seen through the endless reflections of illumination, dispersed throughout the empty, desolate corridor and peeled off walls. Exanimation epidemic upon the chipped off paint and musty, decomposed infrastructure.

 

Rounding the corner and scenting an unmistakable rancor of spilled fresh blood, dripping against the corroded doorknob, he finds the bloodcurdling sight of Hannibal completely enraptured in his concentrated apex predator mode. Nigel isn’t abhorred by the sheer gruesome sight of flayed carcass’s expression, the faded life long lost upon the suffocating air of enmity and bitterness, juxtaposed with Hannibal’s ever so calm and impassive facade, not a single muscle twitching and his heartbeat no more than eighty at most. Hannibal had his almost imperceptive way of letting him know that he had been cognizant of his presence since that knob separated the outside world with the span of time they’re placed in - constructed from the same carbon and cut from the same clothes for the most part.

 

Yes, working as a private investigator would protect both of their interests - Hannibal’s more so, even though he himself had partaken in those same kills and had known his twin’s modus operandi like the back of his hands - as he worked in the homicide department, his recent promotion and the most breakthrough he ever had within the law enforcement came with a grim prize. To give a helping hand into Chesapeake Ripper’s killings as they needed all hands on deck, none other than his brother’s (and seldom, his own as he served as a doppelganger, replicating the kill with ease). He wasn’t going to let all the blood, sweat and tears of his training, all the relinquishing of his past life and the new fails to merge together without visible seam.

 

Standing adjacent to his twin with a hand hovering over the grip of his long accustomed, the extension of himself, his revolver, myriads of fingerprints and blood stains of millions had grazed across the smoothed, silvery-gold surface. Hannibal is in his usual plaid three-piece, a dark navy with a lighter blue accentuating his cream-colored paisley tie with burgundy flower patterns, with the clear plastic suit not even making a single squeak. With a warmth-seeped atmosphere, the ample flow and Hannibal’s coppery tanned face, bright with intense engrossment.

 

Uncocking the hammer and the tightened wrap of his fingers loosening with his askance gaze upon the corpse’s ravaged condition and the harvested organ, the beat of the heart and the warmth from it still invigorating the void of vivacity, he broods, withdrawing the revolver. Hannibal already knows his brother by scent - the lingering cologne of stale cigarette, faint hint of whiskey, intensified by a gleaming sheen of sweat and motor oil. He could literally scent the foliage and fume from the exhaust pipe still clinging onto the younger twin like an invisible veil that he wears so comfortably.

 

With a decisive pivot of his hips, Hannibal’s smooth and flowing motion of a coiled viper strikes quick, the scintillating blade quickly finding the most vital artery along the shoulder, jabbing through the skin and everything underneath in a heartbeat. A deja-vu instantly lunges Nigel’s body forward, the muzzle of the gun instinctively going off near his chest. Their blood scalding against pressed chests, as incinerating as it gets, their plastered body clashes in mid-air, dropping both into a spewing splendor of black opal, the sparks and petrifying paroxysm adhering them like the opposite ends of magnetic field.

 

Nigel jolts up from his sleep, an instant onslaught of illumination turns pins and needles, making his brows to tightly pinch, which in return, makes him to immediately shut his eyes back down. Hannibal’s easy stride closes in, after a flick of the switch of their master bathroom, with a towel around his waist and his hair still dripping wet with water. The white throng of mist makes a hasty retreat, dispersing through the silence of quickened breaths and effortless spread of lips.

 

“A nightmare?”

 

Hannibal inquires casually, hand splayed over the evidence of his presence a few hours ago, the faint trace of his mold still preserved underneath the layer of covers and blanket. Instead of answering, Nigel’s heavily chiseled face, accentuated with an inch of dark bags underneath, returns a curt nod along with a sweeping gaze over his badge and gun, encased in a well-worn holster, courtesy of Hannibal.

 

“What the fuck do you think?”

 

A slight grind of his teeth and growl after, Nigel pivots to turn around, rustling and rumpling to kick the blanket off. Although his shoulder wound, inflicted none other than the one perched on the mattress not even a foot away from him, had long healed without even a faint trace of scarring, spasms underneath from the exertion from too vivid dream.

 

“I perceive that to be the truth, it’s your judgment to admit or deny it. I won’t take offense.”

 

“Don’t fucking mock what my subconscious is egging me in a bloody manner, you know goddamn well it has been bothering me ever since,” Nigel quips, maelstrom brewing in a manner of an early morning’s rush hour traffic, cacophonous with endless honks and tumultuous emotions rubbing like sheets of sandpaper, etching rough marks all over the priceless antique. “I already told you the fucking case I was assigned to.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Rain begins to patter - drumming faster than the whirling wind rattling every inch of the window, almost insistently as the blinding light etches through the sky in an instant. It mirrors that of Nigel’s veined hand, the frustration flaring through the steady protrusion of the vessels, spread across the sheets in hopes to push himself off from the quicksand of the mattress. Too comfortable, sinking, floating. 

 

Accentuating the weight of his words as they heavily hang in the air, Nigel’s naked form shifts underneath the duvet, the swirling glow of xanthic flame waltz across the floor as the embers crackle. What it used to be a comforting white noise manifests to turn firecrackers inside his inner skull, pent-up agitation too stubborn to let it out. 

 

Nigel’s breathing matches that of a violent protest of a victim who is about to enter the brazen bull. A protest against having to leave when the last thing you want to is just to disappear and fade into what he had been formed from - orchestrations of carbon and dust. Titillating between being an individual on the verge of fleeting or accepting his fate. 

 

“Yes, the Chesapeake Ripper case. You are the one and only to know the significance it holds for  _ both  _ of us,” slipping the robe off and carefully folding it to perch it on the nearby armchair, Hannibal extends an arm after lifting the duvet. Their exuding warmth whorls in mid-air, it could be either a tempestuous helix of a whirling ember separating them further or be a binding agent that would plaster them together. 

 

“We both know the circumstance, or rather, unfortunate brutality that had to be exerted, no matter how I value myself to be an ethical butcher.” Hannibal adds, reflecting the time when they had to subdue a reckless individual who had dared to take upon the title that belonged to himself. No matter how bitter, chewy the meat had become because it defied to be dead, he would watch the excruciating twist and turn of every muscle and deepening crease with gloating amusement. 

 

His fingers graze over the long-healed stitched marks over his shoulder. Wretched little thing, that wound had been. Having teared through the muscles and dangerously close to one of the arteries, he still suffered from the lasting effect from the wound. Like a tightened spring ready to bounce, the acute pin-and-needle shoots up, then quickly dissipates. 

 

“How fucking astute of you to think that, yes, I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing that motherfucker suffer like he should’ve been and no, I am not going to give in to one of the biggest case I’ve been assigned to nor,” he contemplates, as he doesn’t know he’d be the one to perform hara-kiri upon himself, or it’s the end of “Hannibal the Cannibal,” a seemingly apt rhyme that doesn’t do a single justice on describing the enigmatical complicatedness present upon the sheer act of consuming the rude. “To turn you in, that hadn’t even fucking crossed my mind as my last bloody resort.” 

 

Words become jagged and drenched with emotions that he couldn’t place. Anger? No, he sought to become excellent and he would continue his ways of partaking the contorted, askewed ethics they share and in weird ways, the idea becomes beautiful. Almost giving him an omnipotent edge. Contempt? Hardly ever, as he had partaken the act of it and enjoyed in thorough manner, down to butchering the meat and preparing it as well. 

 

The things Nigel would do to protect both of their interests came with a hefty, industrious endeavor. Hoping to not expose their clandestine mansion (and its horrendously strikingly evident trails of human consumption and dismembering down in the basement and remain transformed into knick knacks around the threshold), another permanent residence had been set up in Virginia, not too far away from the location of his precinct. 

 

Virginia had one of the most strict requirements of all the states in order for him to retain a license as a private investigator. Instead of the usual route of involving himself with lawsuits, he had turned to become a homicide detective, which in all, had been an inscrutable and unexplainable gravitation. Perhaps a premonitory vision that he sought after, as his own modus operandi along with Hannibal’s, their scrutinization beyond what the others’ attraction - of anatomical exploration, dismemberment, breaking laws, cooking, accepting his own transformation - becoming of some sort. 

 

He had been the one with the redeeming quality of light, when Hannibal had given him the desiccation of bones and sinews, the blackened skin along with gnarled appendages perforating through each vertebrae to metamorphose him into the wendigo. He had long tore through the webs of his evolution and gotten addicted to the subtle flavor of the human meat. 

 

Hannibal once told him that the meat had a distinctive, different flavor. Some meat were bitter about being dead, some lives had been so abruptly ended that it retained its liveliness, the subtle sweetness of pork. 

 

“I am assuming it’s not the breaking of the law nor the consuming of unspeakable rude that has been bothering you, I am more than positively sure that we both are above that.”

 

With an imperceptible exhale, more close of being a sigh, Hannibal shifts closer to his brother, joining him on his side of the bed with the lamp on the bedside table turned on. The permeating illumination slants and cuts through the little space between them, as it contours around Hannibal’s coppery, fluffy torso. 

 

“It’s not the fucking pain itself, it’s all the extra baggage of rushing anger that seem to shake every bloody nerve and rattle my brain,” Nigel sighs and lets the expanse of his skin make a comforting sound, something he had heard countless times when he roamed in the dense wood, the sighing breeze waltzing around as it rustles along with his sauntering steps. “You have seen me in my fucking truest and rawest nature. I haven’t expected you to be a fucking saint over what you consider so brutally elegant and graceful.” 

 

Beckoning Hannibal over with a slight tilt and swing of his chin, Nigel’s fingers leave a crease along the sheets, to be splayed over his brother’s hips, nails leaving crescent indentations. His pupils dilate further, as Hannibal turns off the lamp by his bedside table. The comforting solitude of silence sets in, like a dense mist above unperturbed body of water. With their bodies as the gauge. 

 

In half mockery and half reveration, his poetic remark turns a crude turn. “Until everything becomes fucking subjugated by that lone sensation, you are nothing without the fucking beauty of it.” 

 

The brewing maelstrom rushes over faster than the wound he had retained while he tried to subdue an assailant, only to be succumbed by the red stain as he watched it engulf his whole torso. The marred gnarled flesh angrily stands out under the orange glow, tinged more with the brimming exertion. 

  
“Are we trying to scrutinize the difference of our philosophies or trying to have a fruitful copulation?” With a perceptive raise of an eyebrow, Hannibal’s maroon pupils merely reduce down to two gleaming dots, sparkling brighter than two aligned stars guiding the direction towards the North Star. “I would like to see that anger transform into something else in entirety. I still remember you telling me the way my body slamming against mine made you feel alive,” fixed in space like a coiled viper, then Hannibal’s hand shoots down beneath the duvet. “But then, monsters are always hungry and you’re the only one who can see the graceful beauty in those. Let it enthrall you and remember that feeling.” 


	3. Chapter 3

As Hannibal had so aptly pointed out, the brewing agitation couldn’t be directed anywhere and nowhere; it’s certainly not only his _twin_ , or _himself_ , or fucked up law enforcement, who fails or better, _refuses_ to see beneath the monstrous layer of what is perceived to be a heartless monster who kills people with absolutely no remorse; they’re no better than sounder of pigs and because of sheer brutality and the fact that the victims were alive when organs were harvested, he must be a sadist and a psychopath.

 

Of course, he had more penchant for exerting unhindered violence and he was the one who was governed more with his rushing emotions from exploding, whereas with Hannibal, he was the master of letting it implode and be restrained. The darkness within him had been seeping with pitch-black, getting blacker as he had accepted his own transformation - the desiccated, gnarled limbs, hollow gaze of eyes which had been pushed deep back, deeper than his deep-ridged bones with ash-black limbs reminiscent  of dilapidation, excessive death and corruption and insatiable greed.

 

_Of the flesh, slap of the skin, warmth of the blood, entangled bodies, their scents…_

 

Hannibal’s fingers are just the perfect instrument to let Nigel’s ricocheting emotions become whole, accumulated into a clump he can dissect and scrutinize further. Just the right temperature, applied force and speed. Instinctively tightening his hips, Nigel’s shoulder blade sinks down to thud against the headrest, his foot discarding the duvet off to the side. Hannibal catches the end of it and covers his legs, situating between his twin’s parted legs.

 

Nigel had been the only one with enough nerve to seek after the recently deceased victim’s wife, with the rich man’s death, they wouldn’t have any problem of continuing their life (as they had been blessed enough to been a family to the one with a silver spoon in his mouth), yet, the man had no chance of meeting the gruesome fate, if he hadn’t come across as a narcissistic know-it-all in front of Hannibal, whose erudite knowledge stretched over the subject of Classical literature, Mozart, Dante’s Inferno and Impressionism.

 

“Right now, the Ripper is looking at us like bunch of fools, gloating over and running a fine comb through everything to select the next appropriate pig to be slaughtered. We have nothing to pinpoint to and from.” His superior, a career-obsessed, egomaniacal one matching Nigel’s own shortcoming personality of a blowing fuse had once elaborately spoken in shuddering rage, all the evidence photos scattered about on a wide expanse of a table, designated solely for the ripper case. The last year’s, the previous one, the most recent case where he had been the sole perpetrator as he showcased the exemplary learning of organs, pinpointing each as he had dipped his hand inside the crevice of each viscera. One striking photo shows the ribcage flayed open like an angel’s wings, with small and large intestines spilling over and hanging like a mobile, the body strung up with appendages connected as one, spine cracked and curled like a broken composite bow.

 

Nigel’s own perceptively parts further from the sinking mattress as legs bend over, accommodating Hannibal’s form in between as he exhales in a long shudder. Muscles quivering and tightening as he rhythmically pushes himself into that soft grip. Egging on the stretch of the velvety sleeve as the folds begin to stretch over the swollen smooth head, his splayed fingers immediately make haste to tug Hannibal’s still damp hair. Resounding sense of urgency quickly taken over with the obvious hint of his arousal taking in its form; a viscous drop of liquid formulating as the early morning dew offers the rustle of the grass to retain its liveliness.

 

“I already know what that feels like.” His teeth digs deep into his lower lip, as simultaneous movement of his hips, parting from the rustling sheets and Hannibal’s crude slash of lips, closing in the distance to take a whiff at his exudence. “If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have fucking guts to offer the family their well-deserved condolences and leave my fucking business card in their hands. However they… sounded impersonal and devoid of emotion.”

 

Just like your damned expression, Nigel percolates. Hannibal’s lips imperceptibly curl up, entirely pleased, as his fingers apply the gentlest pressure against the tightened skin around his twin’s testicles. However remotely unenthusiastic Hannibal’s impassive expression suggests, he could feel the undulating palpitation carry over to his own hitching one. Hannibal’s heart rate never had gone above eighty-five, not even when they were in the midst of profound extraction of muscles, sinews and bones. Just like when Nigel had watched his own acquaintances and some of his old confidants get arrested under his wings, the raging fury rampant against their bulging eyes. He had no interest to protect their worthless interests and would have stabbed their back multiple times if he had to. The pitch-black darkness had been only reserved for his twin, as the light in himself had sought their ends.

 

And the law enforcement would only see Nigel as an ex-criminal who had cleaned up his act to become one of the most talented and hard-working licensed private investigators in the district. He wouldn’t even have to work undercover to know the gist of the inner workings, flagrant with betrayal, duplicity and larceny.

 

Even before letting his sonorous baritone, tinged with a hint of caustic jagged edges, come to immediate halt as Hannibal’s warm and slick tongue encompasses the engorged and reddened crown. Hannibal’s form disappears beneath the cocoon of the duvet, the only sensation Nigel perceives reduces into the building warmth, heightened by the spreading undulation from the fireplace, aglow to match the trajectory of the rush of blood.

 

Hannibal’s maroon glint upturns from underneath the camouflage of the shadows to spark in mid-air along with Nigel’s, Hannibal’s knowing gaze approving of his brother’s developing musk. You have been taking my advice, even in the betwixt and between the high-profile case. As dense ring of moisture thickens and the veined erection fully stuffs inside his mouth, the tip hitting the back of his throat as the vice-grip leaves his fingers’ impression all over the expanse of Nigel’s side.

 

“Your damned fucking tongue,” he mutters along with a lengthened sigh, his fingers plastering onto Hannibal’s shoulder, urging him to close the distance, it has fucking marvelous ability to take off my mind instantaneously to somewhere else like you promised. Curled fingers dig to rake through Hannibal’s scalp, as he feels the thick luscious locks against the older twin’s falling locks. Unkempt, scattered about as his own rustles between the headboard and pillow. Warm tongue slithers across the hardened erection, Hannibal’s fingers dig underneath the sharp angle of his brother’s hipbones. His own length presses tight between his pressed thighs.  

 

Glittering sparkle accentuated like that of a big cat’s predatory gaze, Hannibal’s lips are glossed over with his brother’s precum. Lips fervently meeting in an impassioned smear, Nigel’s finger curls into a fist with scattered locks peeking between each finger as Hannibal’s body lowers atop him. Hannibal’s teeth are swift to perforate into his twin’s neck, where cords had already stood out from his bent position. Just underneath the pin-up girl tattoo, his canines dig into the skin for an immediate gratification - the iron-rich tang of blood coating every inch of his tongue as he rolls it inside his mouth.

 

Almost concurrently, Nigel’s legs literally kick Hannibal’s legs apart, his fully hardened, glistening length entrapped between his twin’s abdomen before he pivots his hips, making them lay on their side. While giving access to Hannibal’s relentless ‘marking,’ Nigel’s busy coating his fingers with his spit, and gathering a bit of transparent drop clinging onto the head.


	4. Chapter 4

Half-lidded gaze shooting downwards to roam over the length of their plastered bodies and limbs entangled as the heat seeps through every follicle of their bodies, Nigel’s teeth presses firmly against the lower lip. A huff of breath, reflecting the swirling trail of embers drawing ribbons, etched against the charred walls of the hearth. Hannibal’s clamping mold still suctioned like a leech, those jagged piercing teeth leaves sandpapery burning sensation all over - chafed skin manifesting into a gentle throb, which serves as a catalyst to release his stored-up energy. The sensation is more potent and immediate than any drug he had injected through his veins or have snorted - the instant ramification builds as a whirling lightheadedness, enraptured by coalescing amalgamation.

 

Dark eyes sweeping over their molded forms, his fingers are quick to search Hannibal’s puckered entrance between well-formed asscheeks and another hand sandwiches between their ebb and flow of muscles. Spilled breaths urgently aggravating and increasing as more patches of red paints over the inked surface. If that pin-up girl had been whirled and engulfed in tempestuous whisk, to be enchantingly lost in an intricate web of their erratic breath, becoming more harmonious with each passing second.

 

Hannibal barely makes an audible sound, a petrifying spasm that flare around his gradually arching spine and a slow drawl of his breath the only sign of his growing voraciousness. It’s the quintessence of their relationship summed up in whole - he feeds upon Nigel’s becoming, his own metamorphosis as he accepts both of his striking characteristics to his best. While Hannibal himself, the light had long faded and merged upon the darker strands of the dimmed void. Like the contained flame now emitting crackling gnawing of asphyxiating halt in a form of smothered smoke.

 

The miasma permeates into the room, already having the ambiance of being both the safe haven and source of welcoming respite - gradually building up to be like a kiln to fulfill the intrinsic nature of their relationship; the corporeal, lively conversation about the ontology of human perceptions.

 

Through the gestalt of their similarities and differences, however their conflict distastefully grows into its perfervid proportion or takes a rambunctious turn (courtesy of Nigel for the most part), finds an equilibrium. Hannibal’s teeth are grazing over the hardened skin, between ridges and most vulnerable part where he would surely feel the ebb and flow of blood. His fingertips are both gentle and forceful, maneuvering the younger twin’s neck now to drag his teeth over just under the angular jawline. A day old stubble coarser than the desolate desert. Hannibal’s own muffled cry rattles his chest and brings his taut abdomen to adhere to Nigel’s, as his finger gently coax into his entrance.  

 

“Your fucking lips, on me.” While offering and exposing his neck further, Nigel’s chest hums like that of his superbike, the beast of a crotch rocket slowly coming to life between his strong thighs. With the side of his foot digging into the mattress, his form slithers against Hannibal’s equally rock-hard length, ministering slow, yet firm pressure along the angry vein coming to life underneath his thumb. The permeated color of his torso matches that of the corner of his eyes, bloodshot and diaphanous, exuding that efficaciousness of what his twin had sought.

 

Beyond his life, which had felt like just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire - of trying to juggle between the light and dark, the ongoing battle of interminably flowing wave. Now, all Nigel can submerge himself is the soothing scents dissipating from Hannibal’s hair, dotted violets, sandalwood and a hint of lavender from the nape of his neck and his twin’s quickening breaths, the only switch he can flick with utilization of his body and blood, sweat and scent.

 

Watching the pierced skin produce more black opal-like beads underneath the pitch black, erratically broken by thunderous lightning that continues to etch through the drawn curtains to highlight their coat of glistening stupendousness of their well-toned sun kissed skin, Hannibal takes a deep whiff and feels almost unnoticeable tremble of the cords along the curve of Nigel’s neck. His fingers dig further into the expanse of Nigel’s back and unkempt hair from his short, perturbed slumber earlier - angling the younger twin’s face for an electrifying lock of lips. Crimson seeps through the pores as it would each fiber of the garment and between the palpitating push of heart and the warm cavern sealing enclosure as Hannibal’s sphincter coils tight together, Hannibal’s back arches into his twin’s as his prominent back muscles ripple underneath a warm mist, with one of his legs pinning down the other’s, planted firm like a root digging into a fertile earth.

 

To Hannibal, their conjointment had been like the titillation he gets from the stirring performance of any good symphony, the full orchestra of brass and string instruments - an almost constant incendiary reverberation filled with incandescent ardor. His usual imperturbable demeanor becomes unrestrained and loose as the moment of culmination nears.

 

Balls of his feet digging into the creased sheets, fanning against the pressed weights of both of their bodies, Nigel pivots his hips upward by ball of his feet with an exhaling grunt. Lips still steadfastly making screwing motion as their noses brush and contact, Nigel’s finger only maintains to tease around the hole after feeling Hannibal’s squeeze and outstretches against one of his asscheeks.

 

When Nigel parts, there are three distinctive stripes, diagonally accentuating his protruding collarbone along with the sheen of sweat pooled around the striking stretch of the neck muscle. Hannibal catches enough strip of Nigel’s lower lip, biting hard enough for it to bleed. He barely winces, except those lids half-blinking as a sweat traces a continuous line along his sharp features. “You taste like cherry blossoms - stunning and ephemeral, their extreme beauty and swift death as the sweeping wind flutters the petals,” sinking into the mold where his brother had been, Hannibal licks to savor Nigel’s blood and their mingling sweetness. “A potent reminder that life is beautiful, but far from being everlasting. I remember educating you about Vanitas.”

 

Not too long after Nigel had earned his badge with all of his blood, sweat and tears, Hannibal had taken him to an exhibition down at Walters Art Museum for a rather intriguing subject that they both could relate to and serve as a motto - past all the intricacies of ornate golden gilded frames and the macabre images of Vanitas; all the emptiness associated with worthless nature of materialistic debauchery that ends up to be burning candle at both ends. Both twins had been embodiments of that philosophy which many deemed covetous and wicked. The stark contrast of the dulled umber and earth tones that accompanying the morbidity and extremeness doesn’t put a single infinitesimal dent against their flesh.

 

Their bodies contained more scar tissue than the tide of crowds surging into the grand hall of the museum faster than angry hornets defending their hives with their life. If they had a finite time on this very earth, why not enjoy and go out with a bang than having to be waned like a dated, mediocre piece of composition. Like the harpsichord music, not being able to control the volume of the quill-plucked strings, Hannibal wishes that their shared and linked experience to be exactly that, sudden and entire. Like a wind, without a set destination to roam around the world without restrictions. Then, he wouldn’t be afraid to come forth upon with his most wretched memories he had stored inside the mind palace.

 

“Don’t fucking speak in a poetry and let the words burst in your damned essence. If we are ever to be extinguished or perished in any circumstances,” with a predatory gaze and slurping their mingled, pink-tinged saliva, Nigel chuckles and grabs hold of both of their erections. “I’d live my damn life as crapulously as possible before ill-seemingly bereft of vacuousness.” He entirely means of his twin’s existence, as they both are hedonistic individuals, partaking in sensuous copulatory possibilities as well as lavishing in qualities, rather than quantities.

 

“You’re rather quoting Kafka in a wicked twist.” With an amused slash of his lips as they curl upward, Hannibal shifts his attention to his sensitive head, weeping precum and coating it all over Nigel’s thumb as folded sleeves stretch over it. His hips instinctively lifts, as the velvety skin stretches tight over his testicles, already seeped red with blood flow.    

 

Sliding his thighs underneath Hannibal’s ass and angling his aching erection over the tight bundle of crumpled skin, Nigel’s lips sketch through quasi-permanent smirk typical of his mannerism; both in amusement and genuine reverence. “I’ve had one fucking wicked teacher.. Through the haze and all, when it was hard to make out with all the celestial bodies clamoring for utmost attention.”

 

_Which had made him to appreciate the vanishing light of all._

 

“ _Gegenschein_ ,” Hannibal’s lips agar, his chin tilting slightly up as fingers clutch the closest fabric he could ever reach as Nigel’s erection slowly begins its impalement. As Nigel’s shoulder blade leans toward him, Hannibal is quick to grasp it with his talon-like fingers, drawing him closer. “That’s what it’s called, that elliptical patch of light that appears opposite the sun. A reflection of the sunlight.”

 

“Sounds.. German.” As Hannibal’s tightness squeezes around his veined length, Nigel props himself on one elbow as his fingers curl, relishing that tremor flaring all over between each vertebrae. Legs stretching behind and leveraging as toes curl, propping himself up as Hannibal’s lower half bends over his shoulders.

 

“ **COUNTERGLOW**.” 


	5. Chapter 5

Nigel’s hazel pupils, true to his revelatory word, aglow with a slanting illumination that of an ecliptic light just before a total darkness ensues. Hannibal tilts his head in a clinical manner, while his physiological senses defy to go along his blank poker face.

 

“Yes, maybe you are the one who is laudable enough to instill that quality upon me,” Hannibal adds, bending both of knees together as they perch atop each on Nigel’s shoulder blade as the lub-dub of his heartbeat pushes just beneath his throat, ringing against his eardrum. The pillow dips and a ring of moisture paints onto the pillowcase, the lingering water and sweat creating a halo. The ashen locks fan and cup along the sharp contour of his face. “And a prominent occupant of my mind space, as well as the wielder of every single key and appurtenances there is.” Heels plaster onto the dimple of Nigel’s back, pulling him in as his tight entrance gradually accepts his twin’s thick length. Nigel’s throat reverberates, eliciting a purr-like exhale as the foreskin stretches back, the ring of viscous liquid acts as a lube, but not copious enough.

 

_ Hannibal’s gonna be sore as fuck. As if Nigel gives a shit, but he’d insist upon it. _

 

“Where’s the fucking lube?” Lips askance in a scoff, Nigel’s gaze tells enough of the story.  _ As if he didn’t fucking know it already _ . No one can fully appreciate his twin’s dualism like he could and he still had struggled with the difficulties of accepting it. A  _ venerer  _ upon the throng of other highly coveted predators. Each brutal display had utmost significance. Once, they had murdered a heartless judge, who used his superfluous brain elsewhere to wrongfully convict a pedophile to be released out in the public. The display had been apt enough, a balancing scale with brain on one side, heart on the other. They had only taken liver, kidney and whole volume of blood, leaving the flap of the skin left and covering the old hag’s wrinkled face, tainted with a long-pending allegation of receiving bribes during his service as the prime judge. The corruption plagued the entire jurisdiction as they were the only individuals tenacious enough to bust him for the notoriety.

 

Instead of breaking the composition of their simultaneously rippling bodies, Hannibal shakes his head and lifts his head slightly, the V-shaped tendons tightening as perspiration pools against the flap of the skin. Urging Nigel to start to move as his twin’s length completely fills him, he lifts his ass and squeezes, each inch of tight muscle quivering as toes curl. His heavy, leaking cock swings like roly-poly, then thwacks hard against his abdomen, leaving a transparent stroke just underneath his navel.

 

The corner of Hannibal’s eyes perceptively crease around as Nigel’s body straightens in mid-air, propped by the other’s bent feet as Hannibal catches a lubricative and lascivious sight of Nigel’s cock slamming and kissing the right spot. The curved length easily penetrates each ring of constricting muscles as his stomach ripples with force, the friction of the movement sends the covers to ride upwards as the luscious silk seeps with more of their essence.

 

Withdrawing his length until he sees more beads of moisture form around the stretching fold of the foreskin, Nigel slams his length back inside, drumming his testicles against Hannibal’s ass before slapping his palm against the other’s chest. Grinding his groin between Hannibal’s legs, Nigel’s head shoots up from the veil of his ashen locks, fingers pinching against the erect nipple on Hannibal’s left pectorals, before closing scythe-like fingers around the older twin’s collarbone.

 

“Perhaps you’d like to see that particular counterglow as you fade into the oblivion.” With rakish tilt of his lips, Nigel licks the bottom lip and still tastes the lingering taste of his brother as he feels the body beneath him strain to lift. His firm hand etches his hand print along the inner thigh, while his dominant one feels the bobbing adam’s apple just between his spread index and thumb as it grazes past the chest fluff and well-defined ridge of the muscle underneath it.

 

Hannibal merely blinks, his head pendulously slanting to the side, registering the sliver of moonlight penetrating through the strip between two curtains. The ambiance along with the teal dominant interior gives an ethereal quality of a forest, basking underneath the penumbra of different shades of green, ranging from jade to viridian.

 

As Hannibal’s core tethers with each passing second, he feels that unmistakable lick over his spine, which can be only translated to a soaring arousal. Like a metronome moving in adagio, his lifted erection slowly sleepwalks over between his quivering muscles, see-sawing between shivering cold and tingling rosy pink akin to the candlelight aglow in his core. The lub-and-dub of Nigel’s added percussion creates a foreign sensation, like a third frequency. Tensed up knots abruptly and unexpectedly uncoil as Nigel’s rhythmic thrust continues.

 

As both of their breaths elevate rapidly, Hannibal expectantly looks up, still petrified as little jerking movements escalate into a throe. Just about to succumb to Nigel’s ever-growing relentless impale as a hand clutch around the edge of the bed, while the other winds around the back of his brother’s neck. White-knuckled as thighs unconsciously part more to invite Nigel further in.  

 

“You know what to do.” With each drawl of the vowel, the low, husky languidness dripping from his characteristic tone, Nigel could feel the gentle reverberation and rippling sensation going through the back of his eyeballs, as well as beneath his fingertips as he feels the exertion. With the added suffocation surging in waves as Hannibal relinquishes the obstinately clutched control for once, the veins protrude to etch across the side of his neck and forehead. Cruel lips slowly parting as the life force slowly drains along with each rapid breath.

 

_ He’s looking over the Lecter Dvaras, obscured underneath a dense layer of mist along with Nigel, their fingers entwined, along with their free hands pushing through the creaky iron gate, full of damp and dense layers of vines, untended meadow full of grown weeds and bushes. _

 

Hannibal had offered no resistance as he almost drowned beneath the claiming waves - tightening constriction of Nigel’s finger joints, the pleasure reaches to the zenith of being frightfully heightened, giving off a thrilling chill as the rush of oxygen, along with dangerous teetering between fainting and supplying large amount of air as their bodies take a concurrent sinuous turn - winding, twisting along each flex of muscle, contouring as their adhered bodies rise and fall along with drowning cadence.

 

Every strand of brewing warmth radiating and contouring against his frame, with his one leg bent and the other extended towards the fireplace, Nigel leverages himself firmer into the mattress, letting the carnal lunge full of gushing fluids from both of their bodies, creating more unscrupulously delectable orchestration. Hannibal’s inside fills with ardent fire, that of fire and brimstone. The chasm within the intrinsic void of their mind would only be fulfilled with each other’s existence.

 

With a rush of light invading from a particularly slothful blink, Hannibal’s shutting maroon briefly meet Nigel’s downward gaze as it closes against the nape of Hannibal’s neck as the other’s raspy exhale nears the brink of fainting. He licks over where the unmitigated taste clings like a stubborn heat of the pepper, Hannibal’s personal concoction, of his cologne. Lightheadedness takes over in a form of the wading ebb and flow of the waves; it begins as a gentle kiss over the shore and turns tumultuous, foamy waves crashing and bouncing off against jagged rock formation as Nigel’s ferociousness manifests into the seeping spread of sundown, the vivid, unadulterated chromatic takes over his subconscious.

 

The tiny roots of redness receding behind the intensity of his hazel once again, the exhaustiveness fades away and it is replaced by an unmatched ravenousness. His heavy, tightly drawn balls continues to smack, adding on another wanton prurience to the picture. Hannibal’s free hand is on the base of his erection, a continuous trail coats over his thumb as the stretched sleeve retracts all the way down it could go. “N-Nigel.. I’m close.” Straining to utter the words as they reduce to a raspy whisper, Hannibal stares into Nigel’s swollen lips, tinged heavy with rosy red, a widened smirk stretches along with the curve of the cheeks, amplifying his typical smug smirk. Soon replaced with an easy grin, an arm circles around Hannibal’s shoulders,  just above his tensed bicep.

 

Letting his constricting fingers part from Hannibal’s skin, Nigel feels Hannibal’s body halt in paroxysm, as bursting splatter of pearly white beads turn firecrackers, splashing all over the expanse of the coppery pectorals and seeping through the fluff underneath. Hannibal barely elicits a gasp and slowly blinks, thick lashes fluttering along with the physiological response as he continues to spew copious amount of arching sweetness.


	6. Chapter 6

A concurrent series of exhales feel especially weighty upon Hannibal’s tongue and feels like a sticky mess of a glue. Along with the cloying ripple of stickiness emitting all the heavy musk and concentrated amalgamation of their sap. Wanting not to miss Nigel’s rippling orgasm, his half-shut maroon expectantly looks up, curling his almost half-bent body to fold itself further as his toes curl. **  
**

Feeling Hannibal’s tight contraction along the planes of his abdomen, the warmth of his brother’s blazing expanse of skin only aggravates with Nigel’s impending release. Hannibal’s afterglow feels especially spasmodic as it tears through his throbbing heart, pushing firmer than ever against his chest wall as the last dribble surges through the engorged head and spills forth his outer thigh, creating a tiny puddle of stain around the mold of their combined weight.

 

His brother’s admission acts as an adjuvant as Nigel’s spine curl, the last curve before the vessel of his body finally extinguishes, the engine begins to fume with noxious black smoke, suppressed by the paroxysm running through every inch of his muscle. The sheets underneath their wavering mass dances across with the dying flames, as the pitter-patter of the rain turns to snowdrift, fogging up the window and cotton-like flakes begin to pile over the ledge. His own urging desperation manifests itself in a series of guttural tearing of huffing gasps.  

 

A flood of emotions rush through Hannibal - uninterrupted acceptance, ruefulness and a bit of pity, but most surprising of all is resounding and ever growing hope. Of course, he considered himself the most happiest man on the earth. He had everything; well-earned respect, renowned title of being an effective psychiatrist and exceptional surgeon, a gourmand, erudite on many academic subjects, especially arts and philosophy.

 

Until Nigel stepped abruptly in the doorsteps and to put it nicely, literally seeped his spick-and-span, immaculate life into a technicolor of flamboyant swirl of raw colors that he couldn’t welcome in its entirety. What perceived to be an impressive facade had been built on absolute solitude. Of course, he had acquaintances, high socialites, all the regards to the treasured, precious company he meticulously chose to familiarize with, as they were means of elevating himself further up from the highly selected throng of people. However, bathing in a rush of compliments and pleasantries had been fleeting and once he retreated back to his sanctuary of the foyer, in the Norman Chapel in Palermo.

 

No matter how severe, beautiful and timeless and not in a great hurry, the fleeting information passed faster than the zenith of cherry blossoms blooming. Then, all the ugly variables of wilted recollections of memories, in a form of old musty cellar, had been all that had left. Even beyond the vast structure of his making, a single reminder of mortality in the form of a skull graven in the floor had stared upon him with Nigel’s unconscious face overlapped with the outline of the skeleton.

 

Through the cloyed haze, he sees Nigel’s enraptured face, the minute lines sketching through the corner of his brother’s eyes as the last slow thrust stalls deep within the folded crevices of his walls.

 

Perception had been a tool pointed on both ends as they sifted through differences and similarities. Hannibal had zero intention to change himself in entirely to fit into Nigel’s devil-may-care attitude nor trying to futilely change the other’s personality which seem to sway any way the wind blows. He had learned to cope with Nigel’s, as he was sure his brother had, too. His horrid shirt choices, the tendency to have the most safe and impregnable object to transform into a threatening weapon and an acute allergy consisting of anything classical and scholarly.

 

Yet, Hannibal’s veil, impervious to others, had been stripped entirely bare when it came to his brother. _An ineffable moment, as the equilibrium came along with the price of their spilled blood and unbridled emotions._

 

As soon as Nigel had enraptured his mind, the miserable, irreparable void inside his heart had been mended long before and he had put forth his utmost effort to support his brother’s academic pursuit and other endeavors needed once the other hand flabbergasted him with the crown jewel of a badge. His brilliant unblinking maroon had hidden the firecrackers going off in his skull and electric prickles running along the back of his legs as growing esperance blossomed fully inside the corners of his niche.

 

Now his own delves to fixate on Nigel’s spilling orgasm, almost simultaneous and follows immediately after his own wrecking one. Their inter tangled bodies ensnare in a moment of bliss, that whirling contour of the everglowing, vortices of their flame to incite and invigorate further.

 

Nigel’s posture reflects that euphoric bliss as the exquisite sweetness, molasses and caramelly, takes over. A tingle of electricity flashing down the length of his spine and his pendulous form, which had awaken in tantalizing provocation as maddening heat continues his length to propulse into the cascading heat. With a jerk of his hips, his damp locks tussle as his head turns violently. Hands tremble to clasp tight against Hannibal’s dripping locks, as his lips slack and creases around his eyes etch deeper. A rattling grunt slips out through the tightened lips, then an emission.

 

A surge of heat drenches every heated cavern’s crevices and ridges, the frantic drum solo steadily stalls as the taut skin plasters against Hannibal’s form. Hannibal’s still steady drumbeat continues to throb against his eardrums and as Nigel’s erection completely suctioned into the heat of it all, as Hannibal’s sphincter tightens further, the defined muscles ripple in synchronized movements as he milks his brother clean, down to the last drop.

 

Breathlessly panting, Nigel sinks as their mellifluous composition comes together as whole, more like collapses with a pivot of his hips, fingers gliding over the viscid fluid, acting as agglutinant. Strangely enough, it instills a sense of calm, like sighing wind grazing through each negative space within the densely packed forest.

 

Tightly clutched bundle of sheets loose beneath Nigel’s death grip, veined hand becoming more clammy with escaping heat and matching pulsation that seem to run across the skin. The pleasant bliss of a calm soon obscures with a long, thick streak of blackish-blue of the ocean he used to greet by their second home, turning into a void-like line of ink underneath the rim of the sky. Along with the daybreak, the light within the hazel orbs shuts off almost instantly.

 

Before they extinguish, the bloodshot eyes and bulging eyeballs that seemed to pop out of their eye sockets look like an unfathomable pit, making him look like a demon. Not the one who plummets damned souls into the infernal fire, but the one who willingly drowns in the bed of silk sheets, the daybreak’s luminescence already seeped through the rich green. An odd serenity taking over his features as the world shuts.

 

With gliding smear of lips and spillage of warmth between their thighs as each pore breaths their essence, mending them until the wake. They had all the time in the world as the Saturday morning peaks through the drawn curtain, yet, Hannibal was never the creature to linger in bed. Though, he grows rather appreciative of the way Nigel’s limbs strewn over the side of the bed and his head sinks into the pillow the way a comet does to the unperturbed earth. His unruly hair mirrors that of a seaweed drift ashore.

 

A hint of slashed lips curl in a serpentine manner as Hannibal parts away from Nigel’s slumbering form as he draws the curtain and retrieves a damp cloth to clean both of them up. The dimmed light crawls over the one corner of the master suite as the luscious fiber wipes both their fluids, with Hannibal perched against the edge of the bed, idly tracing a finger after a clumped pearly white still clinging onto his skin. _Exquisite_ , he ponders, as it seeps through his tastebuds.

 

_“Labanakt, brangus broli.”_

 

 _Good night, dear brother._ With a kiss on Nigel’s damp forehead, Hannibal dons a robe and starts down the stairs to prepare breakfast. As usual, he had gotten his minimal four hours of solid sleep and that’s all he needs to function. Never the ones to recycle the same food, Hannibal decides to make Nigel’s favorite, a croque monsieur, ham replaced with thick sliced bacon he had cured himself and sanguinaccio dolce, served hot inside half an orange along with a cinnamon stick.

 

In his heated vividness, Nigel dreams of deluge of blood, both of theirs coalescing together in a sudden stream, the force enough to break a hydraulic dam open. He watches his reflection, imprinted upon Hannibal’s still, bulging maroon as he futilely tries to subjugate passion to reason. _Life or death_ , they will go through that journey together. _The journey of friendship, love, trust and faith._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an epilogue at the end as chapter 7 (it might lead into another headcanon-y fic).


	7. Epilogue

Perhaps it had been a vicious cycle of being tiptoeing around the constant stress that made Nigel to be locked behind invisible bars; teetering between fitful sleep, recurrent nightmares of them perishing together like a flaked blood specks scattering about their motionless, silent heap as their blood-seeped bodies become mere dispersed dust suspended in air.

 

The onslaught of radiant strip of light blindingly blurs Nigel’s world as it begins to whirl around in a indistinguishable haze. The sheen of sweat curving down the arch of his cheekbones intensify as it traverses across the expanse of his coppery skin. As if a vehement chunk of rock formation had perturbed the placid ocean, the lingering image of his graphic illusion continues to pass through the orbs. The flooding crimson violently swirls and seeps through every pore and orifice of them in his unreeling film reel-like dream. He could literally feel each alveoli bursting open as the sacs inflate inside the lungs, causing a fatal catastrophic exsanguination.

 

The slanting illumination overwhelms and basks the crumpled sheets with its full intensity, as the high overhead sun doesn’t provide mercy upon those needing deserved rest. With the pillow lines etched deep into his face and limbs as Nigel seem to sink further to become one with the form-hugging mattress, he immediately shields himself from the onslaught of the illumination, shutting his eyes tight until he feels those sharp cheekbones create a friction against the pillowcase. Muttering in incoherent yet livid Romanian curses, he exasperatingly sighs into the distinctive mold where his face had been and grunts like an annoyed lion.

 

He feels the brewing illness finally breaking in the form of overheated asphalt giving off successions of heatwave. A mirage upon the endless span of sandy dunes and ridges. As if he had already swallowed a fistful of sand, he feels a stubborn, cottony lump lodged deep within his throat as more pained crease etches deep into the curve of his eye sockets.

 

However the immaculate unfolded landscape looks positively impeccable and the bleak winter of Baltimore finally whitens with a fresh undisturbed bed of snow, cocooning the twins’ mansion, the lassitude Nigel feels never vanishes away. The smothered fire, rekindled again by Hannibal just before he had started down the stairs, comes in obscured waves, the view reducing down akin to one of those post-impressionist paintings, with dancing dabs of colors and blank canvas showing the pencil lines through. The peripheral vision reduces to a swirling undulation, as if he had been placed underwater. His heart palpitates as if he already had been holding breath for a minute.   

 

The  _ snow  _ becomes the means of drowning out the world, the  _ clouds  _ taking off the calmness and the  _ sun rays  _ serves as a catalyst to setting the sweltering fire within him. Suddenly, all the summoned heat is unbearable to take and everything seems to muddle beneath the growing wildfire sweeping across in punishment and pain, unhappiness and despair. A cannonade of decimation continues to un-quell the weeping voices out from his ribs and throat.

 

Nigel tries to shut off the world for just another half an hour, the metronome-like clock hand becomes an annoying cacophony of buzzing hornets as he futilely cocoons himself underneath the slightly damp duvet, his sweat still permeated through the intricate fibers.

 

While Nigel battles with the perennial logy weight of fatigueness, soaking up the sun’s rays and transforming into more recumbency, Hannibal moves in an autopilot. In his complete element as he gathers all the necessities as he had been animated by the assurance that everything was unfolding like how it was supposed to go from the beginning. Always a few steps ahead of himself and never letting an infinitesimal detail to slip from his prodigious scheme, a sly, self-satisfied grin plasters onto his cruel lips as he watches a small dab of butter melt away in a cast-iron skillet. It’s the simplest fare, as well as being the hearty, succulent and nutritious. He fixes himself arugula salad with a simple vinaigrette to lighten and cut through the grease. The bitterness of the greens had paired exceptionally well with the rich saltiness of the bacon, crisped to perfection between thickly sliced ciabatta bread, pressed with grill lines.

 

With an arranged tray full of stacks of toasts along with generous amount of béchamel sauce and two dainty cups of sanguinaccio dolce, courtesy of half his own blood, half Nigel’s, Hannibal makes up to the flight of stairs in his relaxed, leisurely stride. By the time Hannibal sets the tray in front of him, Nigel barely manages to utter “hmm..” and plucks himself off the weighty vertigo which seem to split the whole world in half, in tenth, in a complete miasmic ambiance.

 

Nigel’s stomach rumbles immediately with invasion of the succulent scent that he grew to love. The viand had been their go-to item for welcoming respite in the secluded cafe they frequented, the place where Hannibal had wagered Nigel to live under his tutorage and in his own flat.

 

“Croque monsieur and sanguinaccio dolce, you insisted that I replace  _ ‘the fucking ham’ _ with thick-sliced cured bacon.”

 

The profanity against his tongue feels absurd as he lets slide by with effortless drawl, as if he had chewed a touch piece of meat and spitting it out in disgust. With a scrutinizing tilt of his head, Hannibal slides Nigel’s portion and imperceptibly frowns. Half-concerned, half-curiosity crosses those immeasurable depth of maroon pool, gleaming as if he was staring into the darkest corners of his brother’s mind - it’s absolutely terrifying, yet it drips with genuine sympathy that made him the most dangerous apex predator of all.

 

In turn, Hannibal is ought to be the most stealthy, peerless and calculating one out of all, with  _ “The characteristics of what they call a sociopath, no remorse or guilt at all. He won't be a drifter. He'll have no history of trouble with the law. He'll be damned fucking hard to catch,” _ like the rambunctious and temperamental profiler had so aptly pointed out.

 

The wicked concoction barely becomes a churned smear of cream under the haze-filtered hazel orbs. Although the quivering muscles refuse to cooperate under Nigel’s obstinate command as the tremor carries through the unsteady hold of the utensil.

 

“You told me you already had dinner the night before, enlighten me dear, when was the last time you sat down and ate a substantial meal?” Hannibal inquires, as fingers close around Nigel’s own and the other hand immediately plasters around his brother’s uncontrollable and unkempt locks curled opposite the arch of his cheekbones.

 

“Haven’t had anything,” after futilely clearing his throat, Nigel manages to retort in a guttural baritone. His voice sounds like as if shards of invisible glass had scraped through every inch of his throat. “Since fucking bland and dismal slapdash of a grilled cheese from the morning before.”

 

“You know better than well this has a deleterious effect on your health.”

 

Nigel’s shoulders look as if he had been bearing the Chesapeake Ripper’s case all on his own, the weight heavier than blocks of lead, engulfed in a silver stream.

 

Retrieving a syringe inside one of the deep pockets inside the robe, Hannibal shoots a cocktail full of drug into Nigel’s particularly fat vein, protruding against the crook of his elbow. Ignoring Nigel’s deathly glare that seem to reach the back of his brother’s skull, Hannibal withdraws the fork from Nigel’s slackening fingers and watches those broad shoulders roll inward, then pendulously swing backward against his frame. Catching Nigel with a firm curl of fingers around his shoulder, like a falcon would of his snatched prey, Hannibal’s glinting maroon never leaves the lax lassitude of Nigel’s drooping face.

 

Hannibal had already diagnosed his brother from the telltale symptoms as low blood sugar level and a fever just breaking. His medical cabinet already had consisted of a semi-hospital worthy of IV drips and other necessary supplies to execute whatever he desired.

 

Hearing Nigel’s breathing slow down to its steady, yet strained rhythm, he takes a sip from the blood chocolate, plants a kiss upon Nigel’s clammy cheek and fetches a clean, cold and wet towel to place atop of the other’s forehead. After straightening and tidying up the bed and smoothing a hand over the duvet covering Nigel’s sleeping form, he leaves the tray and leaves the door open in a sliver just in case.

 

Hannibal descends the stairs with renewed enthusiasm; to place his utmost trail of thought upon the victim unconscious in the basement. He would let Nigel’s fever break while he butchers the one who had wrongfully taken his identity as the Ripper and reciprocate the desecration done upon his name. Still remaining to be the juggernaut as he wasn’t going to let the internecine conflict go unnoticed, he will deal with Nigel later when he fully recuperates.

 

Before continuing to benefit from the aegis of Nigel’s blood, sweat and tears and taking a hiatus from it all, he would see an end to this particularly insolent pig, pack everything ready for their long excursion to Europe. He doleful gaze sweeps down the dimmed stairs leading to the basement as he hems and haws over and over, the imagery of  _ Lecter Dvanas  _ is in the furthest niche, idly left there in pitch-black darkness as if it had been the most sensitive and treasured manuscript,  _ ultrasensitive  _ to light.

 

He would resurrect that eight-year-old boy, who died in a mold of snowfall and confront the demons, _ together. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my first attempt at writing a multi-chapter twins fanfic. Thanks for reading, and excuse-moi for all the mistakes. It's unedited for the most part and English isn't my native language. I'm sure things never come across the way I want them to be.   
> Anyways, hope this has made me more enthusiastic about dipping my feet into fic-writing.


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